Anita Creamer: For some, history was personal experience

Sacramento Fire Department Capt. Mike Dumford, who manages the local Urban Search and Rescue Task Force flown to New York right after the attacks, remembers the eerie quiet that settled over the bus as the team first glimpsed Ground Zero. Smoke still billowed from mountains of rubble, as it would for months to come. Cameras clicked.

"And I thought, what are we in for?" says Dumford, 37. "It was like nothing we'd experienced before."

We were all witnesses to history on Sept. 11, courtesy of TV and its endless stream of news, and we'll all carry images of that day with us forever. But some from the Sacramento area experienced the power of the events through the power of the place.

On the scene in New York City and at the Pentagon, they were participants in history as it unfolded in the days and weeks that followed.

"When I was there, I realized I was living a Pearl Harbor-type event," says Frank Mosbacher, 53, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman and member of California Incident Management Team 3, which aided rescue workers looking for survivors at the Pentagon. "One of the things that's become clear to me since is that I have a special opportunity as a witness to share the experience being there.

"Somebody told me a couple of weeks ago that there are people who doubt whether the planes really crashed into these buildings. It surprised me how upset I got.

"It happened. They found the plane's black box one day when we were there. They found the wallet of one of the hijackers and the luggage of people on the planes. I mingled with people who were relatives of the people lost."

Sept. 11, as commentators have said ever since, was a day destined to change us, taking away the withering cynicism of a country grown too complacent and reminding us of the deep importance of family and home. For many people, those lessons already have faded - but not for those who worked at the scene of the attacks.

Rose Marie Laraby, 60, is a Mercy San Juan nurse and Manhattan native who returned to the city with the American Red Cross. Among the victims' families she helped were the loved ones of a number of slain firefighters.

"I was so glad to be able to do it," she says. "The fire station in my old neighborhood lost 15 men. When I was young, the men at the fire station watched out for us kids. They turned on their pump for us to cool off in the summer. I always thought of them as special people.

"Some of the firefighters who died, I knew their dads from that station. That was the hardest thing for me."

What Forrest Rowell, 37, a Sacramento Metro firefighter and rescue team member, remembers was the team's surprise at the way people lined the streets cheering for them on their way to Ground Zero - and the helplessness they felt at not finding survivors.

Says Kevin Kinsella, 43, a West Sacramento firefighter: "At first, our hopes were really high. After working on the pile a couple of days, it became real grim and frustrating. The impact of that day just pulverized everything."

For all of them, it was personal in a way it couldn't be for those of us safe at home on the West Coast, far away from the shredded steel beams and tons of debris and dust, the grief-stricken faces of the families of the missing and the smell that shrouded the whole city.

"I felt so much responsibility to make some difference in a situation otherwise so catastrophic," says Dr. Hernando Garzon, 39, a Kaiser Permanente emergency room physician on the rescue team. "This was such a manifestation of evil. Somebody had to stand up and do something good.

"That was one of the things that made this easier, feeling like we made a difference. I felt privileged to be there."

They spent time in hell, in the smoldering ruins of New York and Washington, D.C., and they came back to fanfare - to standing ovations when they spoke at civic club meetings, to being called heroes.

"That's nice, but it's completely undeserved," says Robert Cima, 40, an El Dorado County Fire Protection District battalion chief and canine search specialist on the rescue team.

"The tributes to the firefighters who were lost - that could never be overdone," he said. "But for us, it's undeserved. This is what we do. We got to come home to our families and our jobs. The guys in New York didn't get to do that."

As a result of their experiences, they've changed. Dumford talks about the rescue team's increased bonding and its crisis-honed strength. He also says he doesn't like flying any more. Mosbacher says he chokes up these days when he hears patriotic music. Several rescuers and volunteers say they feel closer to their families.

"I can tell my grandchildren one day that I was part of history," says Kinsella. "I was there to help. I'm proud of that."